


Revisions

by thesometimeswarrior



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Gen, Guardian-Ward Relationship, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Episode s05e29-32 Change Your Mind
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-04
Updated: 2019-09-04
Packaged: 2020-10-10 03:23:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,451
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20521127
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thesometimeswarrior/pseuds/thesometimeswarrior
Summary: She sighs. And then, almost against her will, her lips pull forth the question she’d been trying to push away, that had been building, pressurized, in her Gemstone in the weeks since they’d returned from Homeworld:“Oh, Steven, was I any better than the Diamonds?”After returning from Homeworld, Pearl and Steven have a long-overdue conversation.





	Revisions

**Author's Note:**

> I've been trying to get this piece written for _months,_ and I guess the movie gave me the push I needed! (I was hoping to get it done before the movie, but what can you do?)
> 
> This piece came to be after some thinking I did to write my (double) drabble [Deserving](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17539019), but in the process of writing it, a lot of other ideas that I developed in my short piece [Coda](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17564528) sort became a part of it.
> 
> In any case, I hope you enjoy it!

Though she seldom sleeps, Pearl is no stranger to exhaustion. In fact, when she considers it now, it’s jarring to realize just how much of her existence has been spent in a state of perpetual weariness--that deep weight that seemed to settle inside her Gemstone, heavy as a Diamond’s hands—and that she had become so accustomed to it, that it wasn’t until Pink’s (and her own) secrets came pouring out of Steven’s astonished mouth and she exhaled in a watery gasp of relief that she realized she’d been carrying it at all. 

But _this_ exhaustion, she thinks, is different. Rather than weariness, it’s more reminiscent of those satisfied aches she felt as she first learned to wield a sword, when the thought of Rebellion was still so new, when she’d end the day or night with strained muscles made of light, calloused hands, and florescent multi-colored bruises. There had been a pleasure in those tender spots and that tiredness, a sense of accomplishment that admittedly originated partly in the way Rose had smiled at her after, in Rose’s starry-eyed-ness that Pearl had never been able to ignore. But it had originated, too, in her own burgeoning sense of selfhood—just barely beginning to sprout, in those days—and in the knowledge that _she_ had accomplished something _real_ in the universe, something that heretically seemed to matter more than being a Diamond’s dainty hand-piece, and that she had _worked_ to do it. It’s a similar sort of feeling that she feels every night now, after long days full of helping all the recently Un-Corrupted Gems acclimate to Earth…and to a new reality of peace. 

And she’s not the only one to feel it. Steven stumbles out of the bathroom in his pajamas, yawning and rubbing his eyes. He’s been doing more mediation and rehabilitation than she has—even if he wouldn’t use those words. And as much as he thrives on bringing people together, on helping them express their feelings, it’s draining, even for him. (But the tension that had been steadily growing in his shoulders over the past two years, since the moment he first pulled Ro—_his own_—shield from his Gem, is all but gone now. His, like all of theirs, is finally a relaxed, content sort of tired, and it suits him.)

He yawns another, gaping yawn.

Pearl’s face melts into a small smile from where she sits on the coach. “Tired?”

“Yeah,” he paces over to the stairs to the loft. “It’s been a great day, but…I can’t wait to get into bed!”

_Ah_. That’s her cue to go back into the Temple, then. Or else…take a walk along the beach, or Warp…_somewhere_. It’s been almost two years now since she’s been able to watch over him as he sleeps, and while that’s a boundary with which she’s learned to deal, she still finds it unbearable to be in the Beach House while he’s unconscious and not stand guard. 

“Oh,” Pearl splutters, awkwardly, as Steven begins to climb. “Well. Goodnight!”

“Wanna come sit with me for a little bit?” he calls from his bed.

She blinks. “As…as you sleep?” 

“Yeah, of cour—” He stops short. eyes-widening. “I…Pearl, when I told you to stop watching me two years ago—”

“You never _told_ me to—”

“But I _hinted_ at it! And you clearly got what I meant…Pearl, did you _have_ to listen to me because…I have Mom’s Gem?! Did I…did I give you an _order_?!”

“No! I mean…” Pearl blushes bright blue and hurries up the stairs after him. “I don’t _think_ so…” She sighs and sits down on the foot of his bed. “It’s…it was hard to know, sometimes.”

“I never _meant_ to—”

“I know! Of course I know that, Steven.” 

“But I’m still…I’m so _sorry_, Pearl!”

“I don’t even know that you _did_ give me an order.” She lays her hand on his head, tries to make her voice as calming as she can. “And if you did, you had no way of knowing what you were doing. We intentionally didn’t tell you the purpose that any of us had been built for. And even if we had, you wouldn’t have known for _whom_ I had originally been created or what that meant. Pink saw to that.” A pause. “Besides…if I did...register your words as an order and not just as a request…it’d be because…because I still saw you as _her_ and not as you. Or I wanted to.” 

She sighs. And then, almost against her will, her lips pull forth the question she’d been trying to push away, that had been building, pressurized, in her Gemstone in the weeks since they’d returned from Homeworld: 

“Oh, Steven, was I any better than the Diamonds?”

The question seems to take him aback. “I... _What_? Pearl, what are you _talking_ about?”

“They wanted you to be _her_. And it hurt you. And they couldn’t accept that you weren’t until…”

She can’t bring herself to finish the sentence. Tears well up in her eyes. Her time spent under White Diamond’s control is a bright white patch in her recall, but, one midnight shortly after they’d returned to Earth, roused by the memory lurking in his dreams, Steven had elucidated what had happened in a hushed, trembling voice. (_She took my Gem_, he’d said. _And I…I almost…_) 

The three of them had hugged him tight until he protested that he couldn’t breathe—felt his too-fallible human heart pounding in his chest the best they could—and then sang comforting songs as if to return the beat: _You’re alive. You’re alive. You’re alive._

(Pearl hadn’t known who, precisely, the reminder had been for. Perhaps all four of them.)

“But that’s not what it took for _you_, Pearl.” Steven’s voice rouses her back to the present. “You accepted I wasn’t Mom a long time ago. Right?”

“Yes, but…” She remembers her words to him—it feels like lifetimes ago, now—_Do you have any of her memories? Sometimes I wonder if she can see me, through your eyes._ When exactly _had_ she stopped seeing him only as Rose’s son—as Rose _herself_—and started seeing him as he was? As he always had been? “it took me far too long. And it hurt you then too. Steven, _I_ hurt you.”

“I…” he sighs. “Yeah, I guess you did. But only because I wasn’t sure myself. That I wasn’t Mom. I think part of me…sorta thought that she _was_ me, or that I was her, but…_worse._ Worse at doing all the amazing stuff you guys always said that she did. And you all seemed so lost without her all the time, and I know how much you missed her, and I wanted to be her...for you. But I couldn’t.” 

She glances down. The tears return with a vengeance.

“But I didn’t really get what was she was to you," Steven continues. "I mean, I knew you _loved_ her a lot…but it was way more than that. And I…I guess I get it now. Why it was so hard for you. And it doesn’t make it _okay_, but...I get it.” He pauses, glances away himself. “It’s just that…for so long…I worried that you guys all _blamed_ me. I mean, for her being gone—”

“_Never._” 

His eyes shoot up, and when they meet Pearl’s, her gaze—though watery—is steely, deadly serious.

“Never,” she repeats. “I blamed…many people who didn’t deserve it. But you were never one of them. I’m sorry I made you feel that you were.”

He sniffles. Is it watery relief that he feels, he wonders, and is that why he suddenly feels the lump in his throat? Are they those kind of tears, like he’d cried on Homeworld, gazing at his Gem half and realizing, suddenly, that’s he’s always been _himself_? Or is he sad? 

Regardless, after a moment, he replies: “It’s okay.”

“I love you, Steven. As you are. As you always have been. And that has nothing to do with the fact that I loved Rose, or the fact that I was built for Pink Diamond. I love _you_.”

“I know. I love you too, Pearl.” Steven smiles, wipes the water out of his eyes. “We’ve both really grown, huh?”

In return, Pearl’s face breaks into a tender giddiness, like she’s teetering on the edge of the possible. But, somehow—some-wonderfully-impossible-miraculous-how—this is _real_. “We certainly have.”

“Will you stay with me tonight? As I sleep?”

“Of course." 

And, by the time she bends down to kiss his forehead goodnight, he’s already dreaming.

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoyed! I love comments!!!


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